How Indian nationalism is indebted to Ambedkar? – Times of India (blog)

Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar has emerged as the most celebrated Indian leader, thinker and social philosopher of the 21st century. Celebrations marking his 125th birth anniversary last year were said to be more wide-spread than those in his centenary year. One of the leading mainstream magazines even termed him as the greatest leader of Modern India. One must see these as physical manifestations of the fact that over the years, ideas of Ambedkar have emerged stronger and more relevant to contemporary discourse.

Freedom was the zeitgeist of the country before that dawn of 1947. Freedom for India was the meta-narrative that bound the country which was bubbling with multiple narratives at that time. One such narrative was prescribed by the Congress. It emphasised freedom of India from British colonisers and can be said to have been the dominant narrative of the time. Among other such collective ideas though weaker or marginalised in comparison was the one that was nurtured by RSS. This was the idea of national reconstruction one that saw India as a glorious nation since time immemorial and aimed for its rejuvenation by strengthening its socio-cultural institutions.

Another powerful narrative of the time came from Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar. He talked about freedom of India from social evils like inequality and untouchability. This can be seen as a subaltern narrative of indian nationalism which looked at upliftment of downtrodden, deprived and marginalised sections that did not have any participation in the public life of the colonial India. Dr Ambedkar became the voice of these 60 million deprived and untouchable sections of the society. Without emancipation of this segment, Indian freedom struggle was deemed incomplete. The Indian national struggle in the first half of the 20th century was not merely a struggle to wrest political power from foreign rule but also a struggle to lay the foundation of a modern India by purging the society of outmoded social institutions, beliefs and attitudes.

Ambedkars struggle constituted a part of this internal struggle, one of the divergent and sometimes conflicting currents, all of which helped to secure freedom from external and internal oppression and enslavement. Without Ambedkars opposition to mainstream nationalism, the process of internal consolidation of the nation would not have been carried out sufficiently enough to strengthen and broaden the social base of Indian nationalism.

Ambedkar elaborated upon the idea of Nationality and Nationalism in his book Pakistan or the Partition of India. He describes nationality as a, consciousness of kind, awareness of the existence of that tie of kinship and nationalism as the desire for a separate national existence for those who are bound by this tie of kinship. Ambedkar had immense faith in the bright future and evolution of this country. Even when he spoke of attaining freedom for India, his ultimate goal was to unite the people.

Ambedkar was not against the idea of nationalism but against the Congresss version of it, which entailed freedom of India from British colonialism but not from Brahmanical imperialism under which millions of Scheduled Castes had been yoked for hundreds of years. It was Ambedkars political challenge which compelled the Congress to appreciate the national significance of the problem of castes and to adopt measures which significantly contributed towards strengthening the social base of Indian nationalism.

Indian nationalism in its initial stages, by the very nature of its historical development, was an upper class (upper castes) phenomenon, reflecting the interests and aspirations of its members. Naturally when nationalists spoke in terms of national interest they certainly meant their own (class) interests. The evocation of nation was a necessary ritual to ensure the much needed popular support for an essentially partisan cause. This sectarian approach to nationalism could be seen in the writings of none other than Pt. Nehru in his seminal work Discovery of India, That mixture of religion and philosophy, history and tradition, custom and social structure, which in its wide fold included almost every aspect of the life of India, and which might be called Brahminism or Hinduism, became the symbol of nationalism. It was indeed a national religion.

The sectarian character of Indian nationalism persisted even after the nascent upper castes movement developed into a truly mass-supported anti-imperialist national liberation movement. And, it is because of this failure to change its basically pro-upper class/castes orientation that the Indian national movement in due course helped the rise of new parallel sectarian socio-political currents. Ambedkars emergence on the Indian political scene in 1920s, commencing the advent of Dalit (the scheduled castes) politics, was simply the manifestation of the same process.

At that time, Ambedkars Dalit politics posed no really significant threat to the overall domination of the traditional ruling class, yet it exposed the hollowness of the Congresss claim to represent the whole nation. The nationalist leadership remained unwilling to attack long unresolved social contradictions at the base of the Hindu social order and propelled people like Ambedkar to contest the INCs claim that it represented the whole society.

It was in the backdrop of this escapism of the Congress brand of nationalism that an alternative subaltern nationalism was born through Ambedkar. Ambedkar took up this question from the social below and brought it to a political high by linking the question of caste with that of democracy and nationalism. Such an effort to prioritise society over polity and then linking them together was unprecedented in India before Ambedkar. Gandhi can be said to have made such an effort but his approach was obscure and primitive.

There is no doubt that Ambedkar was vehemently opposed to unjust social stratification in India, but to say that he was against the nation is wrong. He was definitely against the Congress version of Nationalism. Ambedkar was neither an anti-national nor just a leader of the Scheduled Castes. He was a national leader who understood the problems of the most exploited communities and tried to bring them into the main stream. He expanded the social base of Indian nationalism which helped first to attain freedom and later to put the country on path of progress. Today, when all thought converges around inclusive politics, Ambedkar has become more relevant than ever.

The author teaches Political Science in Satyawati College of Delhi University

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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How Indian nationalism is indebted to Ambedkar? - Times of India (blog)